The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “And when I stepped in front o’ the Missy full-length looking glass, and see myself, how I look, how I was right to go without brazzieres, how at my age I ain’t a bad-looking woman, not old yet—change-o’-life hasn’t ask me a question yet, Clemmie—a sadness come over me, and I had was to ask myself, ‘Pinky, where the bloody hell is the black mens in this town?’ A woman in my position—I have a nice job, I makes a decent wage, and I have a small piece o’ land back in Barbados and Canadian Savings Bonds up here—a woman in my position in life should be stepping out with a man who is proud to have me walking beside o’ him! I should have a regular man. You don’t think so? That was the onliest sad part o’ the evening. I was looking good, child. Like something to eat—if I say so myself. And I stepping into the people place, by myself, be-Christ, Clemmie, and there was not even a shadow of a half o’ man excorting me; there shouldda been a man next to me, any kind o’ man . . . well, even a Jamakian-man, then! . . . Heh-heh-heh. Don’t laugh; Jamakian-men ain’ so bad! Be-Christ, you is a Jamakian yourself, so you should know what they gives. I am not able for no man to beat me up and fuck me up, and treat me like no blasted dog. This is the womensliberationiss age, so we have to get with the times, never-mind we is Wessindians. Get with the times, that is my motto for this place called Canada.

  “Look, now that I on the phone, I might as well tell you the latest thing I heard ’bout you-know-who! Yesss! Her! The same one, the selfsame one, gal! Didya know she manage to get pregnunt? Preg-nunt! After all these blasted years o’ trying and failing. Been on the pill for years. Come offa the pill. Went back on ’pon the pill ’causin somebody, a nurse-friend o’ hers tell her that the pill—coming off it and going back on ’pon it—would make her you-know-how, put some green bananas and mackerel in her arse! And as that nurse-friend said, bram! Just after Christmas, she with child. Yesss! In the fam’ly way! Start telling every-blasted-body in Toronto, she was so pleased with her little old self. ‘I getting baby,’ a frien’ of a frien’ tell me she tell them. Well, guess wha’ happen, now. No, not that! No such thing as a fall ’pon the ice ’pon the sidewalk! . . . No, gal! D-and-C! Yes, child, in the midst o’ childbirth, she was back where the arse she started from! D-and-C! And you could imagine how that man feel today. He wanting a child in his old age, and be-Christ, every-and-anybody who can barely wear a dress walking ’bout Toronto with their belly big-big-big, and all his sperms throw-away in Maxwell Pond. The heartbreak!

  “Well, when yuh say one thing, yuh got to say the next. This ain’ no day and age for no woman to say she want thrildren. Thrildren is too much trouble nowadays! That is why I dead telling you I am with the womensliberationiss way o’ doing things. I gets my little fun, and it end where it start. Thrildren? At my age, darling? . . . Well, anyhow, I still telling you ’bout last night . . . I hope I not keeping you on this phone too long, eh? ’Cause these employers nowadays does have everything to say when we sit down for five minutes to take a breath from their blasted slave-work, and they still paying we pennies for that hard labour.

  “Child, I even forget to tell you that I put-on the Missy brown suede maxi winter coat! And, be-Christ, it fit me more better than it have ever fit her. She ain’ have half the shape I have! . . . Anyhow, I have to hurry-up this part before she come smelling ’round my behind, asking me if luncheon isn’t finished yet. The thing last night, child, it was something to see. They put slides and pictures on something which we uses to call a magic lantern back home in Barbados, and these pictures, all o’ them was in Technicolor. They show the sand ’pon the beach more whiter than goat’s milk, more whiter than the snow in Canada, and the seawater blue as blue, palm trees and blue skies that you born seeing and you never know before your eyes touch that magic-lantern screen, that a palm tree and a blue sky was so blasted pretty; you could look up in the sky and see a pin, and it was that pretty, child, that I could even smell the wind and the air and the sea breeze. In one o’ the pictures, they show you a man, a Bajan man, bringing-out breakfast for a family o’ Canadians, and you know, as a Wessindian yourself, what that breakfast consist of: fry plantain; scramble egg—with the egg tasting like real egg and not like the egg powder we buys in this place, where they are able to feed a little-little chicken from a chicken right into a big fowl, in less than three months!—real grapefruit juice, must be from Trinidad; a little fry-pork on the side . . . Thinking ’bout it now, I don’t think now that the picture had-in fry-pork, but I imagine that any proper touriss worth his salt would have to ask for a little o’ we fry-pork for breakfast to make the bowels feel proper and work more proper, heh-heh! . . . All these things I am seeing before my two eyes, child, and be-Christ, a bad thought strike me and I think-back to the time, just half-hour ago, when I went to check-in my coat, or rather, the Missy suede maxi, and the Canadian man behind the counter, set-up his blasted face in such a manner just becausin I ask him to hold on ’pon my woollen hat too. The bastard had the nerve to charge me a next twenty-five cents just for that. That bastard!

  “You know me, Clemmie. I is not a prejudice-minded person, ’cause I understand that all kinds have got to live in this blasted world, together. But seeing the paradise that them Barbadian fellows was putting on for these Canadians, on a Technicolor screen, and I in there, as a Barbadian person, in the midst of all them Canadian people in the touriss business and from the Air Canada place, and to see how that man at the coat-checking place treat me, just like a dog, a funny thought came in my head, and I had was to ask myself, ‘Why, why we ain’ learn no sense yet? That we up here in this bright country, selling-out our blasted piece o’ island, to a lotta prejudiced-minded Canadians, who only going down in the Wessindies for a twenty-one-day fling, their skirts over their heads.’ . . . That is what it is, man, so don’t you come telling me damn foolishness, Clemintine! They going down there for a twenty-one-day excursion to blow off their woman-steam on we men, and be-Christ, I was born and bred there, and have live there more than twenty-one years, not to mention days! Could they contradict them twenty-one years that I live there? Tell me! They could come down from this place and come in my island, my country, and be-Christ, if perchance I happen to want to pass water, and perchance the nearest place and most convenient place was near a beach, and I bend down, as I uses to be able to do before the island start progressing with tourisses, and hold up my dress over my two knees and start ssssszzzzz-ing, you don’t tell me that one o’ these same Canadians who was up there last night at the Holiday Inn—you telling me that one o’ them bitches won’t actually call a police, or a security guard to arrest me, just becausin I am easing myself on my own blasted land? Look at it that way, gal. And you would understand the kind o’ purchase and sale o’ my island that was going on up there at the Holiday Inn last night, right in the midst of all that free rum and with all the shaking o’ hands and handshakes and smiles. Be-Christ, they was on holiday. The way they tear loose in that food, flying fish . . . When is the last day I tasted a piece o’ flying fish? You know as well as hell, that I haven’ been back home since I lannup in this country. That is seven years going ’pon eight.

  “And I was glad to be there because somebody who I know, a maid who works in the touriss board place here, tell me in confidence, that the board was flying-up some fresh flying fish. Seven years since my mouth hasn’ taste flying fish, and flying fish, in case you don’t know it, is so important a stable-dish in my past and in my culture back home, that they even paint it on ’pon the Barbados coat-of-arms, and it is included too in the national anthem. So you see, Clemmie, that when I stannup there, in that push o’ people last night, all o’ them Canadian people, and they was rubbing and shubbing and keeping me from getting in front o’ that table, and when I see this one Canadian man stannup and station himself in front o’ that flying-fish table, toothpick and fork to boot! In case the toothpick that the touriss board provided to eat with didn’ take up enough flying fish, that man stand there, and won’t budge, and be-Christ, Clemmie, I could have
kill him! Just for a flying fish! For eating-up one more mouthful of my culture and past! A man who didn’ even have the manners to ask me, a stranger in that white midst, a Barbadian person who naturally couldn’ be born here, but must be from the islands because o’ speech and other things, that man station himself right there in front o’ that table and in front o’ the other ladies, laden down with the flying fish, and when he move from in front of it, the dish didn’ have in nothing—not even a fish scale, then!

  “Well, after I see how these Canadians could stay up here in their own country, and have a big-big-big party with all kinds o’ freeness o’ drinks and eats given in their behalfs, offa the Barbados Touriss Board people and on we taxpayers’ money, just so! Nothing they ain’ pay for, just a campaign to get more o’ them to continue going down, spenning their money down in my country, and to proceed to buy-up all the whole blasted land. Seacoast gone! The best bathing places ’pon the beach gone long time! When I see how we-own Barbadian people come up here in Toronto and proceed with pictures to sell-out the island in Technicolor, to Canadian people, and the very Canadian people on the back of it, couldn’ have the decency to treat me like a person when I went to check in my maxi coat and beg the man to hold on ’pon my woollen hat for me too, Clemmie child, I telling you that I change there and then from being a simple womensliberationiss-woman right into a blasted Black Panther woman!

  “I stand up there, one o’ the few Barbadians in a throng o’ Canadian people, and see how pretty that magic-lantern thing . . . I think they call it slides in this modern age . . . I watch how that slide-thing make magic outta the pictures o’ my island, and I see how a woman, a lady from Canada, or Toronto, or from somewhere in Northamerica, a stranger, hold-down and lift-up a handful o’ white sand inside her hand, and how she look at the sand pouring through her fingers, and the feeling o’ happiness and peace that come to her face as she see that sand pour through her fingers, like a child watching for the first time a hourglass, with sand coming down like how snow, here in this place, does come down offa a high roof, I see how happy she could be in my country, a strange place to her, and I stanning-up there, right in front o’ her as she was in the picture, and next to others that look the same as her, and I have never felt so strange and lonely in my whole life. After watching that tragedy, the champagne in my hand went tasteless and the taste turned into bush-tea that we uses to use back home to purge our bowels with.

  “Clemmie, I isn’ a prejudice-minded person. And I don’t hold the same racial views as some coloured Americans I have meet here in Toronto, when they come up for their holidays on Thanksgiving Day or on George Washington birthday. I have had the opportunity and the pleasure to be sitting down and exchanging one-two ideas with them . . . ’cause some o’ them, in spite o’ the big car and pretty clothes, does do the same domestic work in America as we does do here in Toronto . . . and I would never forget what one o’ them say to me. She say, ‘Sister,’ . . . and the way she hold that word in her mouth, and pronounce it as if it was a long-long-long word, with more than two syllables in it, in its pronounciation, the way she hold on ’pon that word siiiiiisss-terrrr, and bring it out, slow, slow outta her mout’, and her big Afro hair stanning-up on top of her head like a tower . . . and she was a woman the age o’ my mother, too! . . . Well, then she say to me, ‘Sister, white people is our enemy!’ Jesus Christ, Clemmie, I get so vex with that black Yankee bitch! I was stark-staring mad! I tell her, ‘Now lissen to me, man! How the hell could you stannup in 1972 and say to me that it ain’ possible for no white person amongst the millions of Americans that they have down in the blasted States where you come from, not one o’ them won’t do something good for you, an American yourself, in a hour o’ need? If they hate we, it don’t mean that we have to hate them back.’ I told her that. Clemmie, I took a turn in her arse. And I finish it off by telling her, ‘Lissen to me, lady, you is old enough to be my mother, and I can’t be rude or disrespectful to you, ’cause we were brought up to respect people who are more older than we. But I would have to tell you, in all respect due to your age, that not all white American people is bastards, darling. I works for one, who treats me like a lady. She has to. I demands that much from her!’ And be-Christ, Clemmie, the very next day, it wasn’ more than twenty-four hours after I had meet that sister from the States, less than a day later, that my Missy didn’ do something to me which have me, from that day, watching her arse like a blasted eagle. You should come up here, in this house, invisible as you are here, and observe me and she: tit for tat! She gives me one, I gives her back one. She plays the arse. I plays the arse too. And yet, I can’t hold grudges ’gainst no man, ’gainst no human being once he behave like a human being to me. I am not a grudgeful person, Clemintine . . .

  “But wait! Last time I talk with you, you wasn’t no black militant, gal! What the hell is this I hearing now? For true? You been going to black militant meetings down at the UNIA hall ’pon College Street? Without me? But why the hell you couldn’ call me up on the Missy tellyphone and let me accompany you down there? ’Cause I intend to talk and ask some questions concerning the Barbadian people selling out the Wessindies to the Canadians and the Americans. Child, I have to go with you, next time. And I intends to have a field day informing them ’bout what I think in regards o’ this tourism tragedy . . .

  “They had music too, yesss! But the music wasn’t we music. It wasn’ real Wessindian music. I couldn’ even feel a blasted beat in the tunes they was playing the whole night. And the sad part was—the musicianers was black to the last man, and from Barbados. Some red-skin fellow, one o’ the big shots up there on the flatform, had the guts to tell the people, in the hearing o’ me, that the group was the best calypso band in Barbados and the whole Car’bean! If they is the best, I don’t want to hear the worst. A more serious thing, though, that I realize then and there, ’cause the only thing in my body that was working properly last night was my blasted brain, and it was working like I was a madwoman, thinking and having nothing to do but think. I figured out that them bastards musta been playing this way without beat and without rhythm only when they was playing for Canadian tourisses. They don’t play the same music for Barbadians. The way they stannup up there on that flatform, and get on as if they was burying somebody, instead o’ making a person feel a little life, a little hot blood flowing through their veins in this damn cold place! I needs rhythm and life and rhyme in my body, darling. I like to sit down, or when I am dancing, to hear that bass guitar, or the drums . . . I loves drums! I just loves drums! . . . I like to hear them drums going boooommmm-boooommmm-boooommmm! And the women’s bodies going with the beat, or ’gainst the beat, and still everybody in time, everything match-up, you take a step outside the paling o’ that music and you get back in inside that paling just before the next beat play, you going and the music coming.

  “But to stannup up there, last night, and to witness, to be a witness to the slides and the magic-lantern show, to see how that Canadian man eat-off all the blasted flying fish in my presence . . . I went up for that, and had to left without tasting it . . . to see how that Canadian woman from all the way behind God back could take an Air Canada, leaving me up here in the blasted cold, ’cause that is all this place have to offer me, and to go down there, just because and only because she have the two hundred or three hundred or five hundred dollars to do that, and she could stannup on my beach, my blasted beach, and hold that handful o’ white pretty pure sand inside her fingers and watch the sand fall-out outta her hand, and the pleasure and joy that come to her face when she see that, and when I see and feel how they could treat me, a human being, living amongst them, to leave me here and for them to be able to go there, and live the life o’ queens—child, are you telling me that that Yankee woman from the States wasn’ speaking a grain o’ truth?

  “I went up there at that Holiday Inn place, as a pure-minded, unprejudice-minded person. And when I left, I was the biggest female radical woman they have in this Toronto
. And it all happen over a little thing like a man eating a flying fish in my face, in my presence, and the attitude of his eating that flying fish and ignoring my rights to have a piece o’ that flying fish, which is rightly mine, my own very culture, a fish which is native only to the sea round my island . . . By his denying me that right to get near that table o’ flying fish, I reason that it really and truly was something more bigger than a mere little flying fish, which once upon a time my mother could buy three dozen of for six cents. It was a more bigger thing than a man stanning-up in front o’ me, a lady, a lady, without the common decency o’ saying, ‘Lady, beg your pardon, but do you want some o’ this fish?’ Or even . . . seeing I am a Barbadian person, and he being a man from these parts, who naturally must have been down before in my island, judging from the way he licked his blasted fingers, and from the tan on his face, a man who taste the hospitality o’ Barbados, seeing that the least o’ men would have ask me, ‘Try some . . .’ But as I talking to you this Sarduh morning, Clemmie, it started as a little thing, my being vex as hell with him, over a piece o’ flying fish, but it turn into a mountain. Seeing that man with the flying fish and seeing that woman with the sand, my sand, in her hand, I feel that I did lose a baby. I start to feel just like that woman who had the D-and-C, whatever the hell that mean in hospital terms, musta feel: seeing that she born a thing, seeing something that had start to grow inside her, inside her belly and womb, and then to see it come out in a form that wasn’ meant to be, and disappear in this foreign form, into something that don’t have any use or life in it—Well, now I know what a D-and-C must mean for some women. My blasted belly burned me, ’cause I felt the same as a D-and-C woman.

  “Look, child, am I talking too much for you? All I am worth this morning, after last night, is to talk to you, somebody from the Car’bean. ’Cause, if I were as insane, after seven-eight long years working for this woman, as to forget that you are there somewhere outside this house, Clemmie, I would go mad if I couldn’ find someone like you, my own kit’-and-kin, to exchange two thoughts with. . . . But are you sure I not boring you with my talking? You will have to bear with me, because I can’t take a cup o’ coffee in my hand and go in the living room here, and sit down and say to my Mistress, ‘Look, Mistress, I wants to talk with you.’ And even if she could as much as say ‘What about?’ for me to then say, ‘I wants to talk to you, ’bout myself, the way I feel here in this country, ’bout my culture,’ be-Christ, Clemmie, she would hit the roof. ’Cause, as far as I am concern, she won’t understand what I would want to talk about and why about that. So, you have to bear with me . . .